Moneysupermarket Group has taken an interim office in Bruntwood’s 57 Spring Gardens, for “a small number of people” that make up its More Money app team, while the company continues its search for permanent premises in the city.

The website for comparing personal finance products is understood to have taken 5,000 sq ft of office space, and will open the office in April.

Moneysupermarket has scaled back its office requirement in Manchester since it launched its search for its first base in the city last year.

Initially, Moneysupermarket was understood to be looking for up to 80,000 sq ft in either Liverpool or Manchester. That became a search for 20,000 sq ft to 30,000 sq ft in Manchester. By the start of this year, the understanding among agents was that the website operator was looking for between 6,000 sq ft and 8,000 sq ft, in prime Manchester city centre locations.

Moneysupermarket has 600 staff across premises in Ewloe, North Wales, and also in Soho, London.

The office in Manchester will focus on housing the website’s expanding product development team. While Moneysupermarket would not confirm the amount of people to be based in Spring Gardens, it said that it planned to recruit more people to the team once the office opened in April.

Moneysupermarket Group, which has an annual turnover of £282m and is an established member of the FTSE 250, owns MoneySuperMarket.com, TravelSupermarket.com and MoneySavingExpert.com.

GL Hearn is advising Moneysupermarket. Bruntwood was unrepresented.

Tim Jones, Chief Information Officer at Moneysupermarket Group, said: “Last year, we helped six million families save an estimated £1.6bn on their household bills. We have even bigger ambitions for 2016, so we need to continue innovating to meet our customers’ future needs.

“By establishing this new centre of excellence in the UK’s northern digital powerhouse, we will be well placed to attract the right product engineering and technology talent to drive our plans for growth.”